Thunderbird Long "aka, not that hill again?!”

The 2018 race season kicked off this past weekend with the start of the Escape Velocity Spring Series Thunderbird Long road race. Despite some remnants of snow on the side of the road, the sun was out and it wasn’t actually too cold once we got racing.

This was my first time racing as Michele’s teammate, and after we were both dropped on the second lap we quickly appreciated having a teammate in the race! We settled into a pace line with some of the other riders that had been dropped, and we used the remaining laps of the race to work on our group riding, fuelling during a race, and improving our short steep climbing technique on the infamous Thunderbird hill.

As the final lap came to an end, Michele gave it all she had left in an attack that set me up perfectly for a counter attack into the finish. Unfortunately my legs just didn’t have enough gas left in the tank and we settled for 3rd and 4th respectively in the elite women’s category.

The race was a perfect welcome back to road racing, and a solid start to the season. Congratulations to Hayley Gill from Rise Racing for taking the win and hanging in with the men for the entire race, and to Esta Bovill from TaG Cycling Race Team for outsmarting our race tactics and finishing second.